To illustrate and provide background for the present method and apparatus, the patent application titled “Apparatus and Method for Creating Literary Macramés”, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/361,439, by the present inventor, is incorporated herein by reference. A literary macramé, also called here an ‘ELM’, or electronic literary macramé, is a form of text offering readers advantages over other forms of literature in referencing and tracing connections.
To provide further background and support for the present method and apparatus, the patent application titled “The Knowledge Transfer Tool: An Apparatus And Method For Knowledge Transfer”, International Application No. PCT/US2007/062801, also by the present inventor, is also incorporated herein by reference. The Knowledge Transfer Tool, also called here a ‘KTT’, combines ELM characteristics and capabilities with rule-based expert system and programmed-instruction components to allow authors to produce immersive learning programs in literary and textbook forms on electronic media.
To provide context for ongoing developments relating to the present method and apparatus, the patent applications titled “Method And Apparatus For Electronic Literary Macramé Business Development”, “Method For Presenting Electronic Literary Macramés On Handheld Computer Systems”, and “Method And Apparatus For Digital Watermarking For The Electronic Literary Macramé”, also by the present inventor, are additionally incorporated herein by reference.
The ELM and KTT allow great flexibility and productivity, and to accomplish their tasks effectively and with maximum utility to authors and readers, they interconnect the units or components to be consumed by readers. The profusion of routine hypertext links (hyperlinks, or links), the frequent use of visually-readable indices and tables, and the author's special associations of otherwise-disparate units or components create special challenges for the ELM and KTT technology, and indeed for any similar mechanisms and processes for interconnecting readable electronic document components. The present description hereinafter uses “ELM/KTT”to refer to all such classes of mechanisms and processes.
One opportunity for expanding ELM/KTT capabilities is in the realm of author- or editor-defined links and directives for hypertext handling and navigation. The variety and depth of literary and pedagogical effects achievable with the ELM/KTT would be considerably extended by addressing such linking and directive capabilities.
The addition of easy-to-use indexing capabilities constitutes a second opportunity for enhancement of the value of the ELM/KTT. The index to a literary or academic work is vital for readers seeking occurrences of special terms in the work, particularly if such an index can be provided so as to avoid impact of its use on the immersive experience of the reader. Such an index, in a possibly-expanded form, is highly useful to the author in the midst of developing an ELM/KTT product, especially when the author is learning or creating the terminology peculiar to the product and its realm of knowledge.
A third opportunity for extending the ELM/KTT capabilities arises when considering how authors and readers struggle with information in a visually-organized form such as a table, list, matrix, tree, pyramid, or other two-dimensionally-arranged presentation. Such structures can be integrated with links and indices in an ELM/KTT. Such structures can also be presented to readers in multiple forms, for example, each entry in a table may be shown in a glossary independently for readers who prefer such modes of presentation. Software for constructing and presenting tabular or other structured data in multiple modes would enhance the power and utility of the ELM/KTT.
All three opportunities center around a single theme: the referencing of separate components or units of the ELM/KTT from within other components or units without disrupting the work's immersive character for the reader.